Safety and immunogenicity of recombinant human immunodeficiency virus-like particles in rodents and rhesus macaques

Data from long-term non-progressing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected individuals and populations at high risk suggest that an early cytolytic T cell response rather than the humoral immune response might be involved in controlling disease progression. These observations may be used as a guide to the type of response that a vaccine should induce. To clarify the role of different arms of the immune system in conferring protection, the candidate vaccine should allow a regulated, selective induction of different immune responses. Based on a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms regulating the morphogenesis of HIV, we developed an autologous, non-replicating and safe antigen delivery system. This system takes advantage of molecular characteristics of the HIV group-specific antigens (gag) to self-assemble to highly immunogenic virus-like particles (VLP). The immunogenicity of the gag-derived VLP was expanded either by replacing defined domains by selected HIV-1 cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) epitopes (type 1 VLP) or by stable anchoring derivatives of the HIV-1 envelope protein on the surface of the VLP (type 2 VLP). In complete absence of adjuvants, type 1 and type 2 VLP stimulated CD8+ CTL in BALB/c mice, which specifically recognised HIV sequences. In contrast to type 1 VLP, generating an HIV-specific CTL response in the absence of env-specific antibodies, type 2 VLP induced both arms of the immune system including reasonable levels of neutralising antibodies. Initial studies performed in rhesus macaques confirmed these results. Thus, depending on the type and formulation of the VLP, the proposed antigen delivery system allows either the induction of a CTL response (1) in the absence and (2) the presence of an envelope-specific antibody response. A comparison of these approaches in appropriate animal models might contribute to further define the correlates of protection.